


A Bit of Sparkle

by duchessofthemoonbase



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Claire's, Ear Piercings, Gen, Regeneration, Shopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 11:39:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16240859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchessofthemoonbase/pseuds/duchessofthemoonbase
Summary: "Where did she go?" Ryan asked.Yaz looked at the tiny store with all of its brightly colored knickknacks and groaned. "We're never gonna get her out of there."





	A Bit of Sparkle

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this tumblr post by mrsmarymorstan: http://mrsmarymorstan.tumblr.com/post/178828516160/doctor-100-walked-past-claires-on-the-way-to-the

“Doctor…can I just say?…you really need to get out of those clothes.”

The Doctor looked back at Yasmin and then down to the tattered remains of her velvet coat. “Right. Yeah. It’s been a long time since I’ve bought women’s clothes.”

“When was that?”

“Oh…” the Doctor said, reaching back into her memory for the first time. “This one time I dressed up as a kitchen maid in the Scottish Highlands, and this other time I had to dress as a cleaning lady, and I think it had something to do with maggots, and then—”

“Well then what were you wearing the rest of the time?” Graham asked.

“Men’s clothes, mostly. I was a man.” The Doctor turned and started making her way into town towards the shops.

“I think I’m going to take a nap,” Graham said, shaking his head with disbelief. He’d had enough excitement for one day.

“See you in a bit,” Ryan said, giving him a soft smile before following Yasmin and the Doctor down the road. The sudden impact of grief had made things awkward for the both of them at home.

“So, what sort of clothes do they wear on your planet, anyway?” Yaz was asking.

The Doctor shrugged. “Oh, big hats, bathrobey things that look a lot cushier than they actually are. That sort of thing.”

Ryan and Yaz looked at each other and smiled. They had bonded fast over the past few days over their strange journey with this woman, and they still reacted with awe and confusion at every other thing she said.

“Hey Doctor,” Ryan said. “I’ve been thinking…”

“Yeah?”

“If you’re an alien, from like…space, how come you sound like you’re from Sheffield?”

The Doctor grinned and flicked back her short blonde hair. “Lots of planets have a North,” she said, turning into the charity shop on the corner of the road.

 

***

 

It had been a long wait for Yasmin and Ryan. The Doctor had been trying things on behind the fitting curtain for nearly an hour, and they were getting tired of standing around, watching the Doctor try on everything from a Viking helmet to a green pantsuit. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally threw the curtains back.

“That’s what you’re going with?”

“Yup.” The Doctor grinned and twirled around in her new coat. “Got any cash? Empty pockets.” She shrugged guiltily.

Yasmin sighed and took out her wallet, handing a twenty quid note to the man behind the register. “Are we done?”

“Nope!” the Doctor said, tearing out of the store and down the road, Ryan and Yaz already struggling to keep up with her. “It needs a little something, don’t you think?”

“Like what?” Ryan said.

“Accessories! You know, a scarf, a bow tie, maybe a pin-on vegetable. It’s been a while since I’ve done a pin-on vegetable.”

“Let’s go in here,” Yasmin suggested, pointing to a shop that sold the kind of dignified work clothes that a woman might wear to a posh office job. However, the Doctor was already staring excitedly down the street towards a shop that looked to Yaz like a great neon eyesore.

“I’m looking in there.” The Doctor said, raising her eyebrows mischievously.

“ _Claire’s_?” Ryan asked. “Isn’t that store usually for…”

The Doctor was already sprinting down the road.

“…kids.” Yasmin finished.

By the time Ryan and Yaz got inside the store, the Doctor was already tearing through the store like a tornado. The teenage girl behind the counter was watching something on her phone and didn’t seem to mind or notice.

“Isn’t this place amazing?” the Doctor said, holding up a neon squishy unicorn in one hand and a bejeweled hedgehog in another. “I wish I knew about this place earlier. Nothing would ever have to be boring again! Imagine!”

Ryan and Yasmin giggled as the Doctor crossed the tiny store to examine a galaxy-printed shirt that had “space babe” emblazoned on the front.

“It’s a bit like babysitting, isn’t it?” Ryan whispered to Yasmin. “Yet at the same time, she knows more than any of us ever will.”

“Kinda love her though,” Yaz said.

“Yeah,” Ryan smiled, and the two of them went back over to help the Doctor.

“You know what you’re looking for?” Yasmin asked. “Like a necklace or something?”

The Doctor was so distracted by the sheer amount of sparkles and fur and neon in the room that she barely heard a word either of them was saying. She had already made her way from keychains to boy band notebooks.

“Why is this band called 5 Seconds of Summer? Are they from Argolis? The summer there is only four seconds, but I suppose they could have been rounding up.”

“They’re a boy band, they’re not aliens,” Ryan said.

“Well,” the Doctor said, crinkling her nose. “Suppose I shouldn’t tell you about NSYNC then.”

The Doctor ran over to the hair accessories, where she put on a pair of pearl cat ears and then some clip-on purple hair extensions. “There are so many options I haven’t thought about,” she said, rifling through a clearance bin to pick up a red lipstick. “Do I do makeup? Missy did makeup. Is makeup hard?” she asked Ryan.

“Uh, I um…wouldn’t know?”

“Not worth the effort,” Yaz said. “Why don’t you go for something a little more grown up, like…” she looked around the store, searching for something a bit less conspicuous. Besides, she was what, thirty-five? At least she looked it.

“How about these,” Yaz said. She pointed out the display of tiny stud earrings that you could pick out for piercing. “These studs are tiny and they’ll go with anything.”

“I don’t have pierced ears…” the Doctor said. “Can I do that?”

Ryan and Yaz looked at each other as the Doctor got the attention of the girl behind the counter, and at this point, it didn’t seem like there was anything either of them could do to stop her. “Oi, you do ear piercings here, right?”

The girl looked up at her. “Sure,” she said, and lumbered over to the chair. “What do you want?”

“Can I get all of them?” she asked, leaning out of the chair.

“Why don’t we do one thing at a time,” Yaz said. “You’ve got to sign this waiver first.”

“Aw,” the Doctor said, pouting. “I hate forms. They never have the right boxes for me.” She picked up a pen and scribbled her information down, as Ryan looked on with wide eyes.

“I don’t think they’re going to accept that,” Ryan whispered. “You should probably lie.”

“Eh,” the Doctor said. “They never read the forms if you have rubbish handwriting.” She winked.

The girl came back and looked at Yaz for instructions as if she was a mother bringing her eight-year-old daughter in. “What’s the plan?”

“Just a regular single lobe piercing for now,” Yasmin said. “Yeah?”

The Doctor nodded, and then widened her eyes at the sight of the earring gun. “Does that hurt?”

“It’s just a pinch,” the girl said. “Like getting a shot, you know. Then it’s over.”

“Okay,” the Doctor said. “Deep breath.” She flinched as the girl wiped a disinfectant cloth across her ear.

“I can hold your hand if you want,” Ryan said.

The Doctor nodded and squeezed onto his hand as the girl moved the piercing gun up towards her ear. “Okay,” the girl said. “In three, two, one…”

There was silence, and the Doctor was still wincing. “Did she do it yet?” she turned to Yaz. “Well, did she do it?”

“What,” Ryan said. “You mean you didn’t feel it?”

“What the bleedin’ hell is that?” the girl said, jumping suddenly back from the chair, the earring gun still in hand. “The yellow stuff! There’s yellow stuff coming out of your ear!”

“There is?” The Doctor said. “Goodness, it’s a bit early for an infection, don’t you think?” She turned to look in the mirror. “Oh! Oh! I get it. I’m still rebuilding a bit.” She turned to the mirror and looked at the gold stud in her ear, grinned and then immediately pulled it out…

…then stuck it back in again.

“Cool! Instant healing!” the Doctor said. “Didn’t even feel a thing!”

The girl was staring at the Doctor wide-eyed, whereas Ryan and Yaz stood looking at a store display, already immune to this sort of thing after only a few days.

“I’m ready to do the other one now too please,” the Doctor told the girl. “Oh! And can I get the one at the top of the ear too please?”

The girl shrugged and got on with her work, finishing the two other piercings with a continually puzzled look on her face. It was a bit weird that the woman in the chair wasn’t even flinching, and the gold, sparkly, floaty thing felt like the kind of thing she should call security about, but she didn’t think they’d believe her, anyway.

The instant the piercings were finished, the Doctor took all of the earrings out and put them on the counter.

“Ma’am?” the girl said. “You need to keep those in. And do the cleaning and care regimen in the brochure I gave you. Otherwise, it won’t work and you could put yourself at risk for…”

“Eh,” the Doctor said. “These rules don’t apply to me. Instant healing, see?” The girl stared at her ears in awe. She shouldn’t be right, but…but she was. It looked as if the piercings had been there for years.

“Okay,” the Doctor said. “Back to shopping. Earrings. Gotta find earrings…” She went back to wandering around the store, looking at long bejeweled dangles and tiny studs that looked like puppies.

“What is it that you want, exactly?” Yaz asked.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor said, holding up a pair of tiny hot dog studs to her ears. “Something very… _me_ _._ Something that reminds me of who I want to be.”

The girl was now sweeping up old bits of jewelry that had broken off and fallen underneath one of the rotating racks of earrings.

“Oh!” the Doctor said, picking up pieces from the dustpan. “There’s all sorts of good stuff in here.”

“Take what you want,” the girl said. “It’s all broken beyond repair.”

“Nothing’s ever beyond fixing,” the Doctor said. She inspected a tiny silver earcuff, and smiled jubilantly when she found it was shaped of silver stars.

“The universe,” she said, continuing to rifle through the dustpan until she found another earring, two tiny gold and silver hands shaking…“and all the peace I want to see in it. That’s who I am. That’s what I do.”

The Doctor started to put the earrings in, but Yaz stopped her. “Here,” she said, breaking off part of one of the broken necklace chains and linking the two earrings with it. “It adds a bit of a badass touch to…” she stared down at the bright yellow braces and high-waisted pants. “…all of this.”

Ryan handed the Doctor a hand mirror so she could see the final product. “I love it,” she said, beaming. “Thanks, you guys.” She twirled around once again, hands stuck in the pockets of her new coat. “Fried egg sandwich!” she gasped as if she had just remembered she left the oven on. “I was so busy getting my ears pierced three times that I never got my fried egg sandwich!”

Ryan and Yaz watched as the Doctor sprinted back up the street, her new coat billowing out behind her.

“What are you thinking?” Yaz asked, as she and Ryan started walking leisurely after her.

“That we’re terrible parents,” Ryan said, and they burst out laughing, ready to follow her into forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I know technically this is a bit out of order since she had the earrings on in the charity shop, but too late now!


End file.
